Effective for readers who appreciate supernatural gore, but the timeline becomes hard to track.
In this debut horror novel, several generations of women try to prevent a demon from opening a permanent rift between universes.
In vignettes that skip ahead and backward in time, this tale follows the efforts of women in a family to sabotage a demon. Bernie Baker, as he’s usually referred to, takes several identities as he steals bodies to reincarnate. He commits cruel acts wherever he goes, at one point becoming known as the “Cleveland Crusher,” a serial killer who murders with a vise. He’s sometimes helped by the “Others,” supernatural creatures that take the guise of ordinary people. In 2004, Bernie is now retired U.S. senator and multimillionaire John Arnold, who has used his wealth and position to push forward a big shopping mall in Redhill, Ohio. The mall stands on the site where the barrier between worlds is thin, a location that previously housed a cabin, then an orphanage, and eventually a correctional facility, where Bernie had lived and later been incarcerated. These structures were destroyed, and now Bernie plans a deadly conflagration in the service of a Great Offering: opening a rift for demons and richly rewarding himself. To do so, he needs the psychic abilities of Madonna Bedonne, the latest in a line of women since 1898 who have fought but failed to stop the demon. But if Madonna can harness her powers, she can close the rift forever and save Redhill’s Christmas shoppers. Readers with a taste for gory horror are the best audience for Noble’s novel. Many scenes detail Bernie’s atrocities at length, the more shocking when committed in the body of a child. But with frequent and wrenching jumps backward and forward in time, for example from 1895 to 2004 to 1885 to 1900 to 1894 in the first 19 pages, it’s difficult to keep a handle on the characters or their roles in the plot. (A chart of relationships provides some help.) Things improve late in the book, when the story settles down to focus on Madonna and her circle of friends, who bravely face up to evil.
Effective for readers who appreciate supernatural gore, but the timeline becomes hard to track.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60303-999-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Plain Label Books
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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